Establishment of Israel:
"A Few Humble Coins and the Making of Israel"

The creation of Israel in May of 1948 and its survival
afterwards depended in large part on the Truman
Administration’s willingness to recognize and support the
Jewish state. In the few weeks before independence, President Truman’s
commitment wavered. Without the efforts of American Jewish leaders such
as Dewey D. Stone and Frank Goldman — and the unlikely efforts
of Eddie Jacobson — it is not clear whether Truman would have
kept America’s weight behind Israeli statehood.

On November 29, 1947, the United
Nations voted to divide Palestine so that a Jewish national homeland
could be created from one of its parts. As Abba
Eban observes, "No sooner had the partition resolution been
adopted than attempts were made to thwart it." The surrounding
Arab states threatened to make war on any Jewish political entity. The British, who had administered
Palestine before partition, took a hands-off policy toward Arab attacks
on Jewish settlers.

Most significantly, the American government, which
had been championing partition, began to have second thoughts. The outbreak
of fighting between Jews and Arabs in Palestine after the partition
vote gave the State Department, which had never been enthusiastic about
creating a Jewish state, an excuse to ask the United Nations to delay
partition and place Palestine under a temporary trusteeship. Partition
and the creation of a Jewish homeland might be put on hold.

In contrast to the State Department, President Harry
Truman had strongly favored partition. In 1945, soon after Truman took
office, European Zionist leader Chaim
Weizmann convinced him of the justice of creating a homeland for
Jewish Holocaust survivors. Truman considered many American-born Zionists
excessively strident critics of Administration policy, however, and
in the early months of 1948, while reevaluating American policy, Truman
refused to meet with any American Zionist leaders — even with
Weizmann, a man he admired. The Administration’s positive attitude
toward the creation of the State of Israel seemed on the verge of changing.

On March 12, 1948, Dewey D. Stone of Brockton, MA,
spent the day in New York City with his close friend and mentor Weizmann,
who was troubled by Truman’s refusal to meet. Stone was a leading
American Zionist who would become chairman of the United Jewish Appeal,
United Israel Appeal and the Jewish Agency. On that night, Stone returned
to Boston to attend a B’nai B’rith dinner at the Parker
House Hotel at which he and Frank Goldman, national president of B’nai
B’rith, were being honored. Stone confided Weizmann’s distress
to Goldman regarding Truman’s refusal to meet. Goldman replied
that, by coincidence, he had just visited Kansas City, where he presented
a B’nai B’rith award to Eddie Jacobson, who was none other
than Harry Truman’s former partner in a clothing store. Goldman
offered to call Jacobson to urge him to intervene with Truman. Stone
and Goldman borrowed a handful of coins from others at the dinner, went
to the hotel lobby and phoned Jacobson.

When Goldman put Stone on the phone, the New Englander
quickly surmised that Jacobson knew little of the issues and, however
close they might be personally, would have a hard time making a political
or moral case to the President. Stone invited Jacobson to meet him in
New York as soon as possible. The two men met for breakfast, Stone briefed
Jacobson on the issues, then brought him to Weizmann’s apartment
where, according to Eban, "like so many people of all stations
and many countries before him, [Jacobson] fell immediately under Weizmann’s
spell. After a few hours he left Weizmann’s apartment, intellectually
and emotionally prepared to exercise an influence on Truman."

Jacobson hopped a train for Washington and, according
to Eban, walked in unannounced on his old friend, the President of the
United States. Truman was happy to see Jacobson, but reluctant to be
pressured about the Zionist issue. Stymied, Jacobson pointed to the
bust of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office and told Truman, "Weizmann
was a national leader cast in the same mould and temperament as the
great Tennessee President whom Truman revered." Truman laughed,
made an off-color remark and told Jacobson to make an appointment for
Weizmann to see him.

On March 18, 1948, the two leaders met in Washington.
Truman promised Weizmann to continue to work on behalf of the establishment
of Israel. He also vowed that, when the British Mandate expired on May
14, 1948, he would recognize the state immediately. Moments after midnight
on May 14, as the British withdrew, Weizmann declared the creation of
Israel. True to his word, Truman immediately extended recognition on behalf of the United States. "It was evident," Eban concludes,
"that Dewey Stone together with Frank Goldman and with the aid
of a few humble coins had been able to make a deep impact on the central
issues affecting Jewish destiny." One might add that Eddie Jacobson’s
plain talk to his friend, Harry Truman, helped prevent a change in American
policy toward Israel and, possibly, the course of modern Jewish history.